Iran faces ‘full-fledged human rights crisis’, says UN

Geneva/Dubai — Iran’s “disproportionate” use of force in quashing protests that have shaken the country since September must end, the UN rights chief said on Thursday amid an intensifying crackdown in Kurdish areas in recent days.

UN rights council members are meeting in Geneva to consider a special probe into Iran’s suppression of the mass protests, which broke out after the death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on September 16.

The protests have particularly focused on women’s rights — Amini was detained by morality police for attire deemed inappropriate under Iran’s Islamic dress code — but have also called for the fall of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The unrest has posed one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s clerical ruling elite since it came to power in the 1979 Islamic revolution, though authorities have crushed previous rounds of major protest.

Rights chief Volker Turk said Iran faces a “full fledged human rights crisis” with 14,000 people arrested, including children, as Germany and Iceland pushed for an investigative mission to the country.

While the push in Geneva for an Iran probe is backed by a broad group of countries, the vote on Thursday may prove a test of Western clout within the divided human rights council after a thwarted attempt to scrutinise China in October.

 Turk said Iran has not responded to a request he had made to visit the country. The UN rights monitor said this week that at least 300 people had been killed in the protests since September and noted reports of at least 40 killed in Kurdish areas since last week.

Iran has given no death toll for protesters, but a deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, said on Thursday that around 50 police had died and hundreds injured in the unrest — the first official figure for deaths among security forces.

Bagheri, who is also Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, did not say whether it includes members of other security forces besides the police. Officials have announced the deaths of some Bassij and Revolutionary Guards members in the unrest.

State media reported in October that 46 security forces members have been killed, but without citing any official.

Tehran’s representative at the Geneva talks Khadijeh Karimi accused Western states of using the rights council to target Iran, a move she called “appalling and disgraceful”.

Crackdown

The crackdown has been particularly intense in Kurdish areas, located in western Iran. A parliament member from the mainly Kurdish city of Mahabad said he has been issued repeated summons by the judiciary for his stance in support of protesters.

“The judiciary has raised a complaint against me as a representative of the mourning people instead of conserving the legal rights of the protesting people and the families of victims in Mahabad and Kurdish cities,” Jalal Mahmoudzadeh tweeted on Wednesday.

Prominent Sunni Muslim cleric Molavi Abdulhamid, a member of the Baluch minority in the southeast who has been outspoken in criticising the treatment of mostly Sunni ethnic minorities by the mainly Shi’ite ruling elite, spoke against the crackdown.

“The dear Kurds of Iran have endured many sufferings such as severe ethnic discrimination, severe religious pressure, poverty and economic hardships. Is it just to respond to their protest with war bullets?” he tweeted on Wednesday.

Several Sunni religious scholars from the northwestern city of Urmia issued a video posted by the activist HRANA news agency backing the protests and calling for the release of prisoners and an end to the killing of demonstrators. Reuters could not immediately verify the video’s authenticity.

The US has sanctioned three Iranian security officials over the crackdown in Kurdish-majority areas, the treasury department said on Wednesday.

Reuters